


Empathy

by ToTillAGarden



Series: Healing: A post-Stolen Century Anthology [4]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, also hello i have returned, this is NOT a ship, this time featuring lup!!!, with another chapter of the IPRE Therapy Hour™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 15:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToTillAGarden/pseuds/ToTillAGarden
Summary: Lup discovers a connection she never had before. Magnus remembers how to comfort people.They both talk, and therefore heal.





	Empathy

**Author's Note:**

> And then there were four.
> 
> This one took a while - Thanks for sticking with me, I hope? - and it's kind of small, but I hope it suffices!  
> Lup and Magnus isn't a friendship that I've seen explored often in canon or in fanon, and I thought this one thing in common could really bring them together - so that inspired this fic! This is Lup's story - it takes place later than the rest, but healing is healing no matter when it's done.
> 
> Next in the order, most likely, is Barry! I have an idea brewing for him, which will hopefully get done soon; I've started my summer job, so I don't really have time anymore, but I'll try! Merle and Taako are kind of iffy, mostly because Merle wouldn't really need healing while Taako never really healed, but I'll try to find a way to fit them in.  
> See you then - but for now, enjoy the read, and thanks for doing so! Your feedback is always appreciated; it's always super motivating and I love you guys a lot.

“Magnus, can we talk?”

The question took him by surprise - it was normally him who asked others to talk about their feelings - but the asker was even more shocking. When Lup normally entered his room, she’d slam the door open and hop on his bed and told him she wanted to blast shit and they’d race each other there; so seeing her peek through the doorway and waiting for permission to enter - let alone asking, in a soft and urgent voice, if they could talk - immediately told Magnus something was off. Yet he only took a brief moment to recover from his shock and invite her to sit down next to him on the bed with an “Of course, what’s up?”  
“I’ve been thinking… About the time in the Umbra Staff?” Lup started, leaning back against the bed frame as she spoke. “About how weird it was not to be able to feel and shit. And since Taako’s decided he doesn’t have emotions anymore, and you spent that time in the mannequin…” She sighed. “I thought you’d be able to understand what it’s like.”  
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment. “I thought my experience wasn’t nearly as bad as yours?”  
“I mean, it took me forever just to learn to think again.” She chuckled. “You were kind of in the middle of a fight.”  
“Yeah.” He thought a bit, and she filled the silence.  
“Not to be able to think is so hard to comprehend - I guess you wouldn’t know either - but I spent a solid year where the only thing I knew was that I was _awake._ I was like Davenport on the not knowing shit scale, except it was my own goddamn fault, y’know?”  
Magnus gave her a grim sort of smile before she continued. “And then I learned to think again, and then to hear, and see, and then project my senses, but that took so much fucking time; and the more sense I gained, the more I realized how much I was missing. And while you were in that mannequin and were talking about not feeling your heart beat and holding your wife - I’m still in shock you had a _wife_ \- with those hands and wanting to breathe and feel hunger and shit, I _empathized_ with that.”  
He laughed a little. “Sometimes I forgot you heard all of that.”  
Lup smiled back, but only for a brief moment. “No, but actually - I didn’t even know I was _capable_ of feeling empathy. But then I realized I really wished I could have talked to you at that moment-“  
“Wait a minute….” Magnus looked at her, almost in shock. “You’re in shock I had a _wife???_ ”  
“I’m honestly more surprised she died before you did, dude.” Lup laughed. “Like honestly, marrying Magnus “I want to fight the Power Bear” Burnsides must have been really worrying.”  
“She wanted to fight more things than I did!” He protested. “Plus, Fisher kind of took away my cockiness along with my memories.”  
“That is bullshit and you know it Mags, you hopped right into a _revolution_ for a town you barely lived in for a year -“  
“Raven’s Roost was all I knew-”  
“Fine, Raven’s Roost aside - you fucking _jumped out of the side of a train_ on your first ever mission for the Bureau! Who _does_ that?! You could have _died!_ ”  
They laughed, Magnus stammering in a futile attempt to find an excuse, before Lup calmed herself down. “Back on topic, though?”  
“Yeah, sorry.”  
“Don’t worry about it, man. But what I would have given to just yell out ‘same’ at that moment… I was so out of energy after Wonderland and trying to talk to Taako and seeing Barry that I’m lucky I had the ability to hear you say it.”  
“You tried to talk to Taako?”  
“When he put on that telepathy band for you, yeah.”  
“I’m guessing it didn’t work well?”  
She nodded. “But it was as if you were talking to me when you said that whole bit - especially about not being able to protect people? Not being able to have Taako’s back the way I used to kind of made me feel useless. I didn’t have the ability to feel mad at that either, most of the time.”  
He sighed. “I don’t know whether it was uselessness or anger? But knowing you were there definitely would have made whatever I felt a hell of a lot easier for me.”  
“Yeah, didn’t getting your body back interfere with the whole plan?”  
Magnus nodded. “It didn’t end up being much of an argument, but…”  
“I get it.” She smiled, as if trying to comfort him. “You got so much hope over seeing your body, though - and I’d be lying if I say it didn’t spread, so. Thanks for that.”  
“You’re welcome?”  
“No really, man! It’s hard to feel hopeful after waiting nine years in a semi-conscious state only for your brother not to remember you.” Her laugh, then, was a sadder one. “I never had that much patience to begin with, but when I first heard Taako I thought it was over, and then…”  
“It wasn’t.”  
“Yeah. The little shit told me the staff was ugly the first time he saw it too, and then he picks it up and fucking owns the thing. Takes care of it like it’s his goddamn lifeblood.”  
“With you in it, it kinda was?”  
Her laugh was small, but happier. “I guess? It was nice to see that he really liked it, though. And nice to have you guys around all the time, however many times I could have saved your asses.”  
“To be fair, you did save our asses a _lot._ ”  
“Yeah. You did some badass shit too, even in that mannequin body.”  
“Thanks.”  
She sighed, and they were quiet for a moment - as if out of what to say, but not what to feel - and they let each other think before Lup spoke up. “Magnus?”  
“Yeah?”  
“I… Don’t really get this cheesy very often, but I’m glad I talked to you.”  
Magnus smiled. “I’m glad I could help - you feeling better?”  
“Better enough to go blast away my feelings instead of talk about them.” She admitted. “Wanna come punch shit?”  
He laughed, and then hopped off of the bed. “Only if I can race you there.”  
She laughed too. “Magnus Burnsides, I may be a decade out of shape but you better be ready to fucking _lose._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> I almost called this fic In Animate Objects and just thought you'd appreciate that pun. It's very good - not really as meaningful, but really fantastic. Also, Lup deserves all the italics.
> 
> Since there's no real bonus content in this one, here are a bunch of my headcanons that are implied in this fic that I'd like to state outright for clarity:  
> 1\. Taako, being uncomfortable talking about his feelings to anyone after the memory wipe, wouldn't return to it that easily even with Lup being back. He'll open up to her eventually, but she doesn't want to press him - she was there with him and the Chalice, and already knows.  
> 2\. This is stated more directly outright in the fic, but feelings and senses didn't come easily for Lup. Most people draw her as a semi-corporeal being awake in the curtained room, but I don't think she was capable of being really awake for the first few years, let alone actually know she had a body and be able to control it. Griffin mentioned that she fought for consciousness for years, gained her senses one by one, and didn't know how to feel at first, and I'm sticking with that canon in a stricter sense than most.  
> 3\. Lup didn't know that Taako lost his memories until he found the staff - there would be no reason why she would know, and finding out devastated her. She took interest, however, in seeing how they had all changed - though she could never settle on whether they were completely different people or exactly the same as when she had left.  
> 4\. This one isn't implied, but when I picture this, I see Lup with a body - probably gaining her body back the same way most liches do. Barry only needed the pod because his phylactery was probably on the ship when Taako blasted him off of it, meaning he wouldn't have his normal way of getting a new one, but Lucretia probably kept all of everyone's things, so Lup didn't have to go through the same process.  
> 5\. This one isn't also directly implied, but every IPRE member has different nicknames for Magnus - Lup only calls him Magnus when she's really serious, but she and Barry (after some persuading) both call him Mags. Taako started calling him Maggie ironically, and then it stuck - until the Bureau era, where Maggie was Julia's name for him and no one else's. Merle and Davenport tend to use some variation of "big guy," the former more so than the latter, and Lucretia just calls him Magnus. Fisher calls him Dad - literally the notes D-A-D, which is cuter than any other name and you can fight me on this.
> 
> Edit: Also episode 68 spoilers but can we talk about how Magnus told Lup they need to hang out more???? Yeah that's right I'm here for that. Good shit.


End file.
